Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary, Spring 2022

Honoring Professor David Johnson

Insights The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

SPRING 2022

Johnson • Underwood • Babinsky • Cole Thorpe Johnson • Pistole • Spears • Rigby Beach • Bratkowski 1

Insights

The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

Spring 2022

Volume 137

Number 2

Editor: William Greenway Editorial Board: Carolyn Helsel, Eric Wall, and Randal Whittington The Faculty of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Margaret Aymer Gregory L. Cuéllar William Greenway Carolyn Browning Helsel Philip Browning Helsel David H. Jensen Bobbi Kaye Jones Timothy D. Lincoln Jennifer L. Lord

Suzie Park Cynthia L. Rigby Asante U. Todd Eric Wall Theodore J. Wardlaw David F. White Melissa Wiginton Andrew Zirschky

Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary

is published two times each year by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 100 East 27th Street, Austin, TX 78705-5797. e-mail: wgreenway@austinseminary.edu Web site: austinseminary.edu Entered as non-profit class bulk mail at Austin, Texas, under Permit No. 2473. POSTMASTER: Address service requested. Send to Insights, 100 East 27th Street, Austin, TX 78705-5797. © Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary Printing runs are limited. When available, additional copies may be obtained for $3 per copy. Permission to copy articles from Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary for educational purposes may be given by the editor upon receipt of a written request.

Some previous issues of Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary, are available on microfilm through University Microfilms International, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 (16 mm microfilm, 105 mm microfiche, and article copies are available). Insights is indexed in Religion Index One: Periodicals, Index to Book Reviews in Religion, Religion Indexes: RIO/RIT/IBRR 1975- on CD-ROM, Religious & Theological Abstracts, url:www.rtabstracts.org & email:admin@rtabstracts.org, and the ATA Religion Database on CD-ROM, published by the American Theological Library Association, 300 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606-6701; telephone: 312-454-5100; e-mail: atla@atla.com; web site: www.atla.com; ISSN 1056-0548.

COVER: “Seminary Labyrinth Fountain,” photograph by Professor David Johnson.

Contents 3 Introduction

Theodore J. Wardlaw

Honoring Professor David Johnson 4

Praying in Anxious Times

by David W. Johnson

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An Interview with David Johnson

by William Greenway

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Prayer and Anxiety

by Ralph Underwood

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Lover Extraordinaire: Holy Spirit in Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls

by Ellen Babinsky

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On Sanctuaries and Oceans with No Edges

by Allan Hugh Cole

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Reminiscences Love Letters from an Underground Fan Club

by Suzette Thorpe Johnson, Judye Pistole, Anthony Spears, Robert and Patricia Beach, and Kellie Bratkowski

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My Pastoral and Rascally Friend

by Cynthia L. Rigby

Honoring Professor David Johnson

Dr. David Johnson

Associate Professor of Church History and Christian Spirituality, 2001-2021

Over the years, many colleagues and students have treasured Professor Johnson’s pithy ruminations on teaching, faith, football, life.

We share a few of our favorites throughout this issue honoring his wisdom, his wit, and his humanity.

“Grace will never turn your lies into truth—particularly the lies you tell yourself about yourself. It will, however, expose the truth in your lies, which is where repentance begins.”

“If you are not interested in Teresa of Avila just skip any postings from me in the next few days. I am using Facebook as my theological Etch-a-Sketch. (If you are under thirty, an Etch-a-Sketch is like a computer drawing program except for the computer part.)”

“One of the more difficult things to do in life is not to hear a compliment to somebody else as a criticism of yourself.”

“Every morning I take a beta blocker. Then I go around for the rest of the day, thinking ‘alpha gamma delta epsilon .…’

Somehow things never seem quite right.”

It is good to be around an infant—to be reminded what emotional honesty looks like. I used to cry several times a day.

“The fundamental axiom of Reformed Spirituality is this: God loves you. That is sheer fact. There is no ‘maybe,’ ‘if,’or ‘but.’ There is a “therefore.’ Exploring that ‘therefore’ is my life’s work. I have figured that out just in time.”

“When life hands you lemons, make margaritas. Then your only question will be what to do with the damn lemons.”

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Introduction

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n this issue of Insights, we honor the Reverend Dr. David W. Johnson, who retired at the end of the 2021 fall semester after twenty years here at Austin Seminary. A collection of David’s colleagues, former colleagues, and former students have joined forces in a brave attempt to wrap generous and descriptive words around one who is not easily described. David is, all at once, a seasoned pastor, a brilliant theologian, an enchanting and honest preacher, a connoisseur of fine wines and exotic teas, and a remarkable intellect who also appreciates whimsy.

His own contribution to this issue, “Praying in Anxious Times,” is theological and spiritual tonic for all of us in these particular times. This essay is astonishingly comforting, and reminds us—even in the midst of anxiety—to continue to pray without ceasing. “The world might have become much more hostile,” David writes, “but God is still God, and God is not hostile.” The frank gentleness of a sentence like that invites one to pray fervently—even if one has not prayed in a long time.

The interview with editor Bill Greenway pursues and teases out with David the dimensions of prayer about which David writes. And, in his essay, retired Professor Ralph Underwood sings harmony as he examines the varieties of prayer. Quoting C.S. Lewis, Ralph reminds us: “May it be the real I who speaks, May it be the real Thou that I speak to.”

Ellen Babinsky, in her essay, introduces many of us to Marguerite Porete—a captivating French mystic from the Middle Ages whose prayer life was centuries ahead of her time. Porete evocatively imagined God the Holy Spirit as Love and Lover—“one,” writes Ellen, “who hears, no, knows our prayers before we find the words.”

Allan Cole reminds us that Christians “make sense of life by hearing and telling stories, by locating their personal stories within the more encompassing story of the gospel.” Then he bravely and beautifully shares with us his own experience with adversity and anxiety.

A collection of former students—David’s “underground fan club”—delights us, as does theologian Cindy Rigby, David’s next-door neighbor, with her own evidence of how David, with all saints, occasionally plays the role of a “wicked rascal”!

There is good reading ahead. I recommend that you pour a cup of your favorite tea, or a glass of your favorite wine, sit in your favorite chair, and read on!

Theodore J. Wardlaw President, Austin Seminary

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Praying in Anxious Times David W. Johnson

I

t has been said that there are no atheists in foxholes. Whether or not this is true is problematic, but it does contain a truth: People in extreme situations might find themselves praying, even if they do not normally pray or even believe. Anxious times drive people to prayer.

But does prayer work? Some would say, “Yes, my prayers were answered.” Some might say just the opposite: “I prayed, and nothing happened.”

In this article, I will discuss the principles of prayer in the works of two very different theologians: Julian of Norwich and Karl Barth. Julian was a woman of the fourteenth century who lived as a solitary in England. Barth was a twentiethcentury Swiss theologian and professor. Julian was a mystic whose only writings were drawn from a series of visions she experienced when she was very ill. Barth was a professor who wrote extensively and was one of the most influential theologians of modern times—and who tended to be suspicious of anything smelling of mysticism. On one level, they had little in common. But both lived through anxious times. Julian’s Norwich experienced bubonic plague and civil war. Barth lived through two world wars and their aftermath. They wrote on prayer at a time when both of their worlds were marked by uncertainty, suffering, and death. Consequently, we who also live in anxious times might have something to learn from them about prayer.

Prayer as a Problem In his novel Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham writes on prayer (it has

David Johnson

retired in December 2021 after serving on the Austin Seminary faculty for twenty years, first as director of the Supervised Practice of Ministry and Certificate in Spiritual Formation programs and then as Associate Professor of Church History and Christian Spirituality. He served churches in Texas and New Jersey and taught at Brite Divinity School, and he is the author of Trust in God: The Christian Life and the Book of Confessions.

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Johnson been suggested that the fictional episode reflects Maugham’s own experience).1 The hero of the novel, Philip Carey, is an orphan who lives with his aunt and clergyman uncle. Philip has a club foot.

Upon being told that prayer could move mountains if one only believed, Philip began to pray that his foot be healed. He even picked the day that the healing would occur. But it did not come about. Philip asked his uncle why miracles did not happen if one prayed and believed. His uncle replied that it would show that one did not have faith. Philip tried again, and again the miracle did not come. Philip concluded that no one ever had faith enough to receive such miracles. He started to wonder if his uncle had been playing a joke on him.

It must be said that the uncle’s response was rather cruel. It suggests that there is some deficiency on the part of the one who prays if the prayer does not seem to be answered. Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane surely demonstrates that the response to a prayer is not always tied to the faith of the one who offers the prayer. It might be presumptuous of Philip to select the day of the miracle, but he is a child asking for relief from an affliction. A bit of presumption in those circumstances can certainly be excused.

This incident, however fictional, does illustrate some of the difficulties people have with prayer—particularly, the issue of prayer being answered. Does belief, or the lack thereof, affect the results of prayer? In anxious times, when people are almost driven to prayer, is the depth of one’s faith the deciding factor? Is answered prayer somehow a reward for faith? We will explore such questions with Julian and Barth.

Principles of Prayer According to Julian of Norwich The details of the life of Julian of Norwich are almost unknown to us. The evidence is scanty: her own twice-written book, Revelations of Divine Love, or simply Showings; the account of Marjorie Kemp’s visit to Julian; and brief mention in some legal documents. She lived during the last half of the fourteenth and into the fifteenth century. She was an anchoress—that is a person who lived a life of solitude and seclusion. Julian lived in a one- or two-room cell attached to the church of St. Julian in Norfolk, England. After she had entered it, Julian would not have been allowed to leave her cell, but the townspeople could consult with her through a window. Julian thus would have functioned as the equivalent of a pastoral counselor or a spiritual director.2 Consequently, her teaching on prayer has a pastoral tone throughout.

Julian’s single known work, Showings, is an account of sixteen visions she received while she was gravely ill and near death.3 It exists in two versions: a short text recounting the visions, prepared shortly after Julian recovered from her illness, and a long text, written years later, which contains amplified theological reflection on the visions. The principal discussion of prayer is in the long text.4 From this discussion, the following principles of prayer can be adduced.

We pray to the one who loves us. Julian is, above all, the theologian of the love of God. The stress throughout Showings is that God loves us, created us out of love, 5

Praying in Anxious Times forgives and redeems us as an expression of love, and protects us because of love.

The long text closes with these words: “And in this love he has done all his works, and in this love he has made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting.”5 God’s love is the context for all prayer.

Consequently, Julian urges us to pray wholeheartedly. “Pray wholeheartedly,” she urges, “though you may feel nothing …”6 God rejoices in our prayer, even if prayer seems dry and empty to us.7 Julian’s pastoral care is evident here. She knows very well that prayer can seem fruitless and barren. But God sees it differently. The prayer that feels pointless to us is treasured by God. This leads us to a second principle: The purpose of prayer is to unite us with God. Why pray at all? Julian is very clear: Our prayer conforms us to God’s will. Prayer, Julian says, unites the soul to God, “for he beholds us in love, and wants to make us partners in his good will and work.”8 This means that the principal work of prayer is our transformation. This transformation can be slow work and might not be immediately perceptible. Because of this, it might seem that our prayers are not answered, when the answer is really who we are becoming.

This surely involves our release from sin. Julian is well aware of human sin, but she is gentle about it: “For our courteous Lord does not want his servants to despair because they fall often and grievously; for our falling does not hinder him in loving us.”9 The very fact that we pray at all is an indication of God’s mercy: “But let us do what we can, and meekly ask mercy and grace, and everything which is lacking in us we will find in him.”10 It is natural in anxious times that we pray for the removal of the cause of our anxiety, and there is nothing wrong with this. But Julian teaches us to be attentive to our own transformation, no matter what is going on outside of us. Famously, Julian says that God has promised to make all things well.11 In fact, Julian urges us to pray for that which God has promised to do. We ourselves are among those things that God has promised to make well, and so we can trust that our spiritual healing is the fruit of our prayer.

Prayer begins in God. This is a constant in Julian’s understanding of prayer: We pray at God’s initiative. “I am the ground of your beseeching,” Christ says to her.

There is in Julian something like a predestination of prayer: “For everything which our good Lord makes us to beseech he himself has ordained for us from all eternity.

So here we may see that our beseeching is not the cause of the goodness and grace which he gives us, but his own goodness.”12 It is for this reason that Julian counsels us not to be disheartened but, again, to “pray wholeheartedly” when our prayers seem dry and dead. The fact that we pray at all is an indication that God is at work, both in us and in the world. How we feel about prayer varies, but God’s love does not.

Julian’s principles of prayer show us how to pray in anxious times. Her understanding of prayer is centered on God. We pray to the God who loves us, so we can pray with courage and trust. The purpose of prayer is to foster our unity with God and our participation in God’s work. Our prayer begins in God, so we can pray with6

Johnson out undue self-regard or self-analysis. We can and will be anxious about our times, but there is no need to be anxious about God. All will be well.

Principles of Prayer According to Karl Barth Karl Barth remade Reformed theology in the twentieth century. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that Barth remade all of theology in the twentieth century.

His literary output was enormous. Besides the fat volumes of the Church Dogmatics, he published histories of theology, sermons, biblical commentaries, essays, and collections of prayers. The contrast with Julian is stark: where she wrote and then rewrote a single book, Barth wrote thousands of pages. But they share a common concern. Both of their theologies are pastoral. Both wrote for the church. And both worked to help Christians be Christian.

Barth treated the topics that have come to be subsumed under the rubric of “spirituality” as matters of ethics. Worship, prayer, and confession—in the sense of the praise of God as well as the acknowledgment of sin—are, for Barth, matters of obedience. But that obedience is also the exercise of freedom. “Freedom” for Barth is never a choice between alternatives by which a human will be judged. Rather, it is the single path of obedience to God’s command. Freedom is something like enablement or empowerment. God’s gift of freedom and God’s command come together.

Understanding what prayer is for Barth requires attention to both the gift and the command. Barth discusses both the gift and the command in conversation with virtually all the Christian tradition. Within that discussion, there are principles that help to address the issue of praying in anxious times.

We pray to the one who loves us. Here Karl Barth and Julian of Norwich are at one. Each is a theologian whose theology centers on God’s love. Indeed, Barth calls God, “The one who loves in freedom.”13 Prayer is commanded by God, Barth insists. Because God has given permission for humans to pray, God commands that humans pray. “That God loves man is the meaning of his command …”14 Knowing that we pray to the one who loves us means that we can pray in trust and without fear. God commands us to pray because God wants to hear our prayers and looks upon us with kindness even when our prayers are stumbling attempts to say what is on our minds and in our hearts.

God hears and answers all prayers. Barth does not make any distinctions when he discusses God’s hearing of prayer. He does not divide Christians from nonChristians, elect from reprobate, or saint from sinner. He certainly refuses to make God’s accepting of prayer a matter of technique, such as concluding prayers with phrases such as, “In Christ’s name.” Barth only speaks of those who pray as “children of God.” God hears God’s children: “No little hands, stretched out or folded before him, are too dirty to achieve something with him.”15 Barth does not fence prayers in. Discussing “Our Father” at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, he remarks, “What does ‘Our Father’ mean when the we who utter this cry are not, as God’s children, a private club with a sacred private end, but the people and community of his witnesses to all other men?”16 Witness as a task 7

Praying in Anxious Times of the church is a key point in Barth’s ecclesiology, and it includes prayer. Prayer is communal—we pray to “Our Father” rather than “My Father.” Prayer is also a form of witness. The church that witnesses is made up of people who pray. God hears the prayers of the witnessing people, and God hears the prayers of those to whom the church witnesses.

God perfects our prayers. God hears and answers all prayers, but God works between the hearing and the answering. The answering is not automatic. It cannot be, because our prayers are the imperfect prayers of an imperfect people. “What would they be with all their prayers if he to whom they bring them did not have better knowledge—the very best—concerning what they need and want and desire?”17 Consequently, God perfects our prayers according to God’s own wisdom. “In the great and little matters with which his children approach him, he and he alone knows what is really and properly and fundamentally necessary, what is helpful and fruitful, what will truly be to his own glory and their salvation.”18 It is this perfected prayer to which God responds. “God’s hearing begins when he receives the prayer as he himself has transformed it.”19 This means that we can be confident that our prayers are answered even when they do not seem to be. But it also means that we might not recognize the answer to a prayer when it comes. Our perfected prayers and their answers might not be anything that we know as ours. So, we might think that God has ignored or rejected our prayers when in fact our prayers have been perfected. That a prayer has been answered might be a matter of faith and not sight.

Praying in Anxious Times—Some Help If it is true that there are no atheists in foxholes, it is also true that life is full of foxholes. There is no shortage of anxious times in everyone’s life, and living through the COVID pandemic has compounded the anxiety. The world has become much more dangerous in the last two years than it had previously been. We are now, if we are not in total denial, afraid of our environment and each other in ways we had never been before. Life has become a giant foxhole. Which means that many of us will find ourselves praying. What can we say about praying in anxious times?

Following Julian and Barth, the first thing we can say is that God loves us and wants to hear our prayers. The world might have become much more hostile, but God is still God, and God is not hostile. Our prayers are not launched into an empty void. God hears.

We can also say that our prayers are always answered, but we might not recognize the answer. Julian suggests that the answer to prayer involves our transformation—which might not be apparent to us at any particular time. Barth tells us that it is our perfected prayers that are answered, but the answer might not be apparent to us at a particular time. They both agree that our prayers are answered, but discerning those answers could be a very elusive thing. The answers are real, but might be hidden—as is grace itself. However, Julian reminds us, the very fact that we pray is a sign that God is at work.

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Johnson Philip Carey concluded that no one ever had faith enough to guarantee that prayers would produce miracles. That might well be true, particularly if one concludes that the efficacy of praying could be empirically verified. But it cannot. However one might sympathize with a small boy whose prayers for healing have not been answered, prayers and the answers to prayers are not proven or disproven by experience.

Praying is a matter of faith, even if it is the kind of faith that asks God to help our unbelief. But our anxiety is misplaced if it centers on our praying. God hears us in love and responds to us with love. However rocky our paths might become, we are accompanied by the one who loves us and to whom we can say, “Thy will be done.” v NOTES 1. W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (New York: Bantam Dell, 1991; originally published 1915).

2. A full discussion of what is known about Julian’s life and work can be found in Philip Sheldrake, Julian of Norwich: “In God’s Sight”: Her Theology in Context, (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2018).

3. Julian’s work has been translated several times. I am using the edition prepared by Edmund Colledge, O. S. A., and James Walsh, S. J.; Julian of Norwich, Showings, (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1978). This contains both the short text and the long text. The long text is notable for an extended account of God as mother.

4. Showings, 248-255.

5. Showings, 342.

6. Showings, 249.

7. Showings, 249.

8. Showings, 253.

9. Showings, 245.

10. Showings, 253.

11. This is one of the most quoted parts of Julian’s work. Cf. Showings, 225.

12. Showings, 249. Julian often uses “beseeching” as a synonym for prayer.

13. Cf. Karl Barth, The Doctrine of God (Church Dogmatics II/1), ed. G. W. Bromily and T. F. Torrance, tr. T. H. L. Parker et al., (London, UK: T & T Clark, 1957). This is a cornerstone of Barth’s doctrine of God. 14. Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Creation (Church Dogmatics III/4), ed. G. W. Bromily and T. F. Torrance, tr. A. T. Maclay et al., (London, UK: T & T Clark, 1961), 88.

15. Karl Barth, The Christian Life (Church Dogmatics IV/4: Lecture Fragments), tr. G. W. Bromily, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981), 107.

16. Christian Life, 100.

17. Christian Life, 107.

18. Christian Life, 107.

19. Christian Life, 107.

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Interview

Insights Editor William Greenway Interviews

David Johnson Why do you stress that Julian of Norwich exhorts us to pray even if prayer feels dry and empty to us?

I think that one of the fallacies of our time is that prayer is supposed to feel good. A lot of devotional literature talks about the rewards of prayer, which can be real. But not everybody experiences that. And people who don’t often think they are doing something wrong or that there is nothing to this prayer business. Julian has a pastoral emphasis. Her words to people having difficulty praying are: God hears you, God loves you, God cares about what you say. And you can trust God to be there for you, no matter how your prayer feels at any time.

Where does this confidence in God’s love come from?

For Julian, confidence comes from her conversations with Jesus Christ. Showings recounts visions she had while ill to the point of dying. There is a crucifix in front of her. The crucifix comes to life, and she has extended conversations with Christ on the cross, who assures her of God’s love. Now, not everybody is going to have that kind of experience. But I think a reason for Julian’s popularity in the 20th and 21st centuries is that people need to hear that God is love. If they hear that secondhand through reading books, it still works, it still is the assurance of God’s love. I also think the emphasis that God is love is scriptural, and the words of scripture are trustworthy, and it seems to me that Julian is trustworthy as well.

The second principle you discern in Julian is that the purpose of prayer is to unite us to God. You speak of this in terms of our spiritual transformation. Is this the only purpose of prayer?

All genuine prayers bring us closer to God. That might not be the only thing they do. It is standard to divide prayers into categories: thanksgiving, intercession, petition. But every prayer is done with knowledge that we are talking to the God who loves us, and we are transformed by prayer. A lot of times it is slow. Transformation involves healing, uniting our will with God’s will and uniting our work with God’s work. I wouldn’t say prayers only bring us closer to God, but I would say every prayer does that, no matter what else the prayer is doing.

Can you say more about what this transformation feels like?

Transformation might be different for different individuals, but part of the transformation would involve increasing confidence in the presence and goodness of God and the willingness to let our lives be shaped by that. Christians who write on 10

Interview spirituality emphasize the decreasing importance of material things in your life, being willing to give up things, not basing your identity on what you own. Another sign would be that your capacity for love grows, in particular, your capacity to love people who are disadvantaged or even your enemies. This does not necessarily make you happy. It might be that you are subjected to tremendous difficulty. But that shouldn’t be news to anybody who knows the New Testament. Luke says pick up your cross daily—and you can only do that because you trust that God will not abandon you.

You say sometimes it seems like our prayers are not being answered, but this is because the answer is “really who we are becoming,” which speaks to the transformation you were just discussing. But what about praying for healing or for a new job or for safety on a battlefield. If we do pray in these ways, should we only expect spiritual transformation?

I would encourage people to pray for healing, to pray for safety, to pray for whatever they think they need. But if what you ask God for does not come about, that doesn’t mean nothing has happened. Sometimes what has happened is within you. I think it’s important for people to understand that God desires to hear our prayers and that God does not censor our prayers, but God does not necessarily respond in the way we desire. Barth says God hears our prayers, but that God perfects our prayers.

The third principle you discern in Julian is “prayer begins in God.” What exactly does this mean or feel like?

We pray in part because the Holy Spirit moves us to pray. For people who might say, “I tried to pray, and it seemed like I was just speaking empty words out into the void,” Julian would say the very fact of praying, no matter how it feels, means that God is already at work within you. If you know the hymn “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” that was my grandfather’s favorite. He was a farmer and I learned it because he would sing it to himself when he was out on the tractor or picking fruit. Not everyone experiences a “sweet hour of prayer.” But even if you don’t think anything is happening, even if you think it’s pointless or fruitless, the very fact that you try to pray is an indication that God is already at work within you.

How would you sum up what Julian teaches us about praying in anxious times?

Do it. It’s that simple. Pray. Pray hard. Sometimes we are anxious because things are dangerous, things are scary. That’s how life can get sometimes. But God loves us, so don’t stop praying. Don’t worry about how it feels. Don’t worry about results. Just do it. I think that’s her essential message.

Is it fair to say that prayer never substitutes for doing? So, for instance, you don’t pray for healing while not also going to the doctor …

I think prayer is doing something. I wouldn’t want to make too hard a distinction between praying and doing. It’s a problem if there is a divorce between what we pray for and what we do. That may be part of the difficulty I have with the bumper 11

Interview sticker “Let go and let God.” Well, I think that we can let God and we don’t have to let go. What you pray for and what you do should have some relation to each other.

If you pray for the poor you should also be doing for the poor.

You say Karl Barth says that God commands us to pray, and “that God loves us, is the meaning of God’s command.” How do we hear that command to pray and how God’s love is the meaning of that command?

We might not experience commands as expressions of love. But that’s because there are things in life that command us that are not divine. God’s commands are based upon love. One of the commands is to pray. Paul famously says, “pray without ceasing,” make your desires known to God, pray to the One who loves you. That is not just a suggestion. Prayer is a matter of obedience, and how that might feel at times is irrelevant. The basic principle you see all through Barth is that God commands, and God’s commands are expressions of God’s love.

You emphasize that Barth says that God hears the prayers of all, whether or not they’re Christian, whether they are saint or sinner. What do you make of this universal inclusion?

It’s entirely consistent with Barth’s theology. Universalism shows up in Barth in many places. He says God justifies all, God sanctifies all, and God gives a vocation to all. That is decisively universal. Christians in the church have a special job. Their job is to announce the grace of God, to share the good news. But the love of God according to Barth is for all of God’s children. God’s love is expressed in the willingness to hear all prayers, and that means some prayers are not explicit prayers. It might be my desire that my child do well on the exam today or the hope that my friend who has cancer experiences healing. That’s almost a prayer. I think God hears them as prayers. To make them actual prayers, just think about who it is you’re talking to.

Does this mean that all will be saved? Barth says we might deduce that from our theology, but God is not going to be bound by our theological deduction. So, universal salvation is not something we can deduce, but it is something we can pray for.

You say that Barth says that God “perfects our prayers.” What sorts of prayers need perfection and what are the characteristics of a perfected prayer?

I’m not sure you can address that in general terms. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, Is this the kind of prayer Jesus would pray? Say you pray that someone who has injured you might suffer misfortune. Well, that’s not a prayer Jesus would pray.

But that prayer might be perfected. For instance, I might pray, “God, Fred injured me; take away my anger and help me understand that Fred is just a person who’s trying to get along just like everybody else.” That is a prayer that acknowledges your anger but is concerned for Fred’s welfare. I think that would be an example of a perfected prayer. I think Barth has in mind the way prayer can turn hate into love.

You say sometimes we think a prayer has not been answered, when actually it has been perfected, seeing the answer to the prayer is “a matter of faith 12

Interview and not sight” …

I think we pray with trust that God will hear our prayers and in a way that is an expression of God’s love. We might not experience that. It might happen outside of our sight. That is part of what it means when we say, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” We don’t get to what we need until the half of the prayer when we say, “give us this day our daily bread.” We don’t say that part until after we have said “thy kingdom come,” which may be happening outside of our sight. That’s what I have in mind when I say that prayers being answered might not be a matter of seeing but of faith—faith that God will work in ways that build the kingdom. The fact that we don’t see how God could be at work in a particular situation does not mean that God is not at work in that situation.

You say that Barth stresses the “Our” in “Our Father…” to emphasize that prayer is a communal activity …

I think there’s a reason that the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t start with “My Father.” From the very first Christian treatise on prayer by Origin in the third century, up to the present day, people have used the Lord’s Prayer as a model for what prayer should be. So, “Our” means we are praying with other people. Sometimes we know it, as in a congregational setting. But even if you are praying when you are alone, that does not mean you really are alone, because other people are praying at the same time.

Other people are praying in their individual ways, but we all experience the same things, not just the good things, but the pain, worry, anxiety, and trials. God knows us as individuals, but God knows us as a people as well.

What would you personally say is the essence of prayer?

To pray is to speak to the one who loves us. That is Part A. Part B is to surrender to the will of the one who loves us. So, prayer is talking to God who loves us, and prayer is submitting to God’s will.

You frame your essay with “there are no atheists in foxholes.” How is a prayer in a foxhole a real prayer and how might it need to be perfected? Say I’m in a foxhole and pray, but in short order I’m killed or grievously wounded. How has that prayer been perfected or answered?

Sometimes people are wounded and sometimes they’re killed. In such cases I think that the perfected prayer might be something like, “God, do not abandon me even in my pain.” Romans 8 comes to mind: nothing can separate us from the love of God. Those who have died have been welcomed into heaven. Now that’s something that also is a matter of faith, not sight. Regarding the “God saved me” or “God did not let me be wounded” or “God did not let my friends die,” it seems to me that the response to that from God’s side is, “I would not have abandoned you even if you had been wounded or killed.”

The boy in the novel hears that enough faith can move mountains. He prays his club foot will be healed. Nothing happens. His guardian, a pastor, says this 13

Interview shows he lacks enough faith. I wholeheartedly agree when you say his guardian’s response was “cruel.” What would you have said to that young boy?

Quite honestly, I am not sure. I would certainly say that your disability does not separate you from the love of God, that God’s will was that you endure this, for whatever reason, and I would say that you can endure with grace and faith and a sense of humor, and with the sense that your life still has value. I wouldn’t want to make it cheap. I wouldn’t want to give young Philip platitudes. I do often think about the Gospel of John where Jesus encounters a blind man, and he is asked, Who sinned, this person’s parents or themselves, that he was born blind? Jesus responds, Nobody sinned, this was done to show the glory of God. I often come back to that story. And I think about the ways in which those who are unhealed can still be manifestations of the Word of God. And I think that happens. Actually, I know that happens. But I know that people who are wounded physically, psychologically, or spiritually suffer because of their wounds. I would want to say to anybody, but particularly people with physical disabilities, that the fact that you are disabled does not at all mean that you have lost your worth as a person. Your value as a person does not depend upon your disability. Your task as a disabled person is to find what it is that you can do and then do it. It might take a while to figure out, but you are a valuable person, and you can do valuable work.

You are someone living with a disability. Did you identify with the young Philip Carey? Are your scholarly insights rooted in your own life experience?

Due to cerebral palsy, my legs are rather severely compromised, but my arms and my speech are not. That meant I could make a living by talking, which I have done.

I first read Of Human Bondage as a teenager, and I was struck by this passage about Philip Carey. I understood it. I really did. I understood the desire. I understood why he prayed to be healed. I understood the disappointment. And I understood how that could compromise or destroy one’s faith. For me, personally, I think that my fundamental desire in relation to my disability was not to be healed as such but to belong, to be a part of things. That was what I really wanted. Boys growing up compete. You play football, you play basketball, you play volleyball, you roll around on the ground. I wanted to be a part of that because I wanted to belong. So, my prayer in relation to living with a disability was, “Let me belong, let me be a part of things.

Let me find ways to do things I love doing that I can do without reference to being disabled.” And it seems to me that, in terms of whatever gifts I’ve got and in terms of where life has taken me, I’ve been able to do that. Would I like to have lived a life without a disability? Yes, of course I would. What is the reason that I must live with disability? I don’t know. I think there is a massive “I don’t know” that is part of the answer to any consideration about disability. Why am I blind? Why am I deaf?

Why can’t I run? Why did God allow this to happen? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. But that doesn’t mean that you are without worth, and it doesn’t mean you have nothing to contribute. So, your task in life, and this is to myself and to other disabled people I know, your task in life is to find something that you can do, and to do it as well as you can. v 14

Prayer and Anxiety Ralph L. Underwood

Introduction Both anxiety and prayer raise many questions with no ready or easy answers. When does anxiety begin to erode faith? When does anxiety cause one to question the value of prayer? When might anxiety help one to reconsider in a potentially constructive way one’s understanding of God and of prayer? What is prayer? In this essay, I shall endeavor to make one suggestion for consideration and contemplation concerning the relationships of anxiety and prayer.

Luther called prayer the first exercise of faith. When it comes to anxiety, why turn to prayer? What purposes does prayer serve in relation to human anxieties?

It has been said that anxiety is not the greatest of God’s gifts. Can anxiety be a gift just as pain can be a gift? If so, the point of prayer is not always to reduce or eliminate anxiety. Just as there can be stress that is constructive and stress that is destructive, so there is more than one kind of anxiety to consider in relation to prayer. Let me suggest that a major purpose of prayer is to keep anxiety in balance so that our anxieties can be positioned to help serve God’s calling. In Christ, God bids us offer our anxieties in prayer in the faith and hope that we can be of service to the God of love and enjoy God forever.

Uncertainty The classic definition of anxiety is that anxiety is the fear of the unknown. One can fear a specific object or kind of object when it is known, for example, like fear of spiders. Sometimes one cannot identify specifically the cause or reasons for feeling

Ralph Underwood is Professor Emeritus of Pastoral Care at Austin Seminary, having served on the faculty from 1971-2001. He is the author of Pastoral Care and the Means of Grace (Fortress Press, 1993) and Empathy and Confrontation in Pastoral Care (Wipf and Stock, 2002).

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Honoring Professor David Johnson afraid. Unknowns are so pervasive that they mark daily life and stretch beyond personal lifespan. What a new day may bring is unknowable. How much suffering will one have to endure in a lifetime? When will death decide to make its descent? We worry even though Jesus asked, “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” (Luke 12.25)1 Still, not all unknowns provoke alarming distress. One of the reasons many of us love sports events is the fact that moments and outcomes of these events are unpredictable. Reducing uncertainties overly much yields boredom. Ever loyal, anxiety follows risk-taking relentlessly! And with equal doggedness, anxiety keeps company with creativity!

The sources of unknowable possibilities seem to have multiplied these days: the COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly intense and extreme weather events, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, as well as political dysfunction and malfeasance that threaten democracy. These developments produce new terms, such as eco-anxiety.

Such unknowns surround and fuel personal anxieties that come with illness, care of family and significant others, financial insecurity, and a host of similar concerns. Often enough our worries and anxieties have to do with what we cannot control, but invade our hoped-for peace regardless. Each stage of one’s life-long development entails a transitional time of anxiety. While we well might like for our daily schedules or long-range plans to be written in ink, they are better laid out in chalk.

When people become overconfident they become unteachable. A measure of anxiety opens us to the quest for more knowledge and insight—and to listening to God. How often do crises create the conditions that enable us to be more teachable?

Paul Tillich held that there is such a thing as existential anxiety and that this is normal and universal for humans, for we are aware of our mortality. He tried to convince leading psychotherapists of his day, with whom he was in constant dialogue, of the reality of existential anxiety and that it is dynamically different from neurotic anxiety. On the whole, these therapists remained unconvinced. But numerous scriptures speak of such anxiety. Take Psalm 90, for example. With poetic power, verses 1–11 prayerfully contrast the reality of God and human mortals, and tellingly this leads to a prayerful petition (verses 12–17). Prayerfulness and prayers may not be the only response to existential anxiety, but often they are the first.

All these anxieties often engender uncertainty about God, or at least our mental images of God and understandings of God. This may threaten commitment to Christian faith or it may occasion growth in faith and wonder at the mystery of God. Likewise, such anxieties disrupt our own self-images and understandings, yet may open the way for new and promising self-understandings.

Prayer Often prayer is born in pathos. In a sense we pray before we are aware of the need to pray, before conscious awareness calls out words of prayer. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very 16

Underwood Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8.26). It could be said that real prayer begins when the words won’t come, when longing is lifted up in appeal and perhaps hope. Anxieties often compel us to pray. Hence the saying “Pray as you can … and as you must.” Psalm 94.19 confesses, “When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.” Praying renews primary relation with God despite persistent anxieties.

How often do we identify ourselves with the problems we have? A person might think, “Who am I? I am one who tends to get depressed.” Another thinks, “I am one who gets anxiety attacks.” This kind of self-identification is what I call a profane identity, wherein we identify ourselves with the problems we face. Prayer helps release us from such an identity to become aware of sacred identity, the level of self-awareness that God gives. Praying can help restore or renew a sense of purpose and of sacred calling.

Pray as you can … and as you must Being attentive paves the way for prayer and may be a form of prayer. Can we be carefully attentive to our anxieties and just as attentive to the remembered and promised presence of God? Perhaps Proverbs 16.20 envisions both: “Those who are attentive to a matter will prosper, and happy are those who trust in the LORD.” When the Virgin Mary “pondered” the heavenly message, was this not an example of being attentive in the midst of anxiety? Was this a basic form of praying? How essential such moments and times are to life: “Keep our heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4.23). Journaling is an effective way of pondering and being attentive, and I highly recommend this practice.

Prayer as Listening While at times prayer is a defense against personal and community anxiety, prayer can be a creative response to the various sources of our anxiety. To quote what has been attributed to Roy Fairchild, to pray is “to bring all we know of ourselves to all of God that we know.” Similarly, C. S. Lewis wrote, “May it be the real I who speaks, May it be the real Thou that I speak to.”2 Listening for God’s presence or a word from God is a form of prayer: Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, For he will speak peace to his people, To his saints, to those who turn to him in their hearts. (Psalm 85.8) John Calvin wrote, “… it is by prayer that we call him to reveal himself as wholly present to us.”3 Listening prayer has the power to dethrone false idols. As an individual or a worshiping community looks deep within and looks beyond in prayer, images of self, of community, and of God can be transformed. Frequently prayer is born in stillness, in silence, yet has the power to move us from problem-centered thinking to person-centered relating with God and others. In prayerfulness and prayer we seek God, we seek communion with the sacred. God remains a mystery, unknowable, yet God reveals Godself in the Christ and through the Spirit who leads us into prayer.

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Honoring Professor David Johnson Prayer as Praise Psalm 105 opens with ten imperative verbs, seven that have to do with praise and three that relate to petition. This is not meant to be a formula for how much prayer should be praise and how much should be petition, but it stands as a reminder of how essential and vital praise is in both personal prayer and corporate worship. I treasure hymns of praise and doxologies in public worship. Praying evokes adoration of the Holy One. In prayer we pay homage. We bless the Lord and ask for God’s blessing and inner strength.

Praying has a bodily dimension, and not only in terms of kneeling, standing, or raising hands. Daily life provides abundant opportunities for virtually everyone to discover or create rituals of praise. Brother Lawrence was known for constant prayer and praise while working in the kitchen.4 Most of us are able to walk, and I suggest that walking, daily when possible, is a good time for praise. Praise to God helps me to walk troubles away and shed excessive anxieties. Gratitude grows with every step. My esteemed colleague David Johnson cannot walk. His love of tea may provide another example of a daily ritual that, in my way of thinking, opens the path of praise. Such daily rituals have distinct power to help manage anxieties and realize their potential for creativity.

Prayer as Petition Bonhoeffer declares that we must learn to pray from Christ and not use “the false and confused speech of our hearts.”5 Certainly we do well to learn to pray from Christ; the Lord’s Prayer tutors the imagination and guides reflection. Yet I hesitate to censor prayers. The Psalms do not. When anxieties and confusions are lifted to God in prayer, can they be transformed? Petitions have a way of not ending where they began. Prayer is not confined to petitions. Even in petitionary prayer we come to listen to God. Furthermore, as Luther recognized, in prayer and worship we become priests to one another. How often we pray more readily for others than for ourselves! Lifting up to God our own anxieties and concerns, as well as those of others, can ease the weight that presses on us. In petitions we look to the sacred mystery for inner strength, belonging, and wisdom.

Closing Reflection Prayerfulness and prayer as being attentive, as listening, as praise, and as petition are vital both personally and communally. Praying in corporate worship connects our isolated selves with one another and with the God of Jesus the Christ. Today that worship may be in person or online, but the connection and the oneness are there.

Nagging and, yes, alarming levels of anxiety have a way of weighing in on our daily lives, and there are no easy answers to all the questions that living in these days provokes. At the same time, the gift and challenge of prayerfulness and prayers beckon: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6); “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Prayerfulness 18

Underwood and prayer educt us from troubles of the times and induct us into the world of sacred wonder.

In chess, the pawn functions as a weak figure in the board’s actions—until a pawn reaches the end board. Then by exchange it is transformed into a chosen, more powerful actor. Might this observation suggest an analogy for the interaction of anxiety and prayer? Paradoxically, might anxiety, not the greatest of God’s gifts, bathed in prayerfulness and prayer, reach a destination that enables a transformation to become a powerful gift in God’s ongoing providence and care? v NOTES 1. Citations of scripture are from the NRSV translation.

2. Lewis, C.S. Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1964), 82.

3. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John T. McNeill, editor (Westminster Press, 1960, III, 20, vol. II), 851.

4. Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (ICS Publications. 1994).

5. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible (Augsburg Publishing House, 1970), 11.

“Jesus never turned to the other thief and said, ‘And you won’t.’

This Easter day, we ought to stop, at least for a little while, putting limits on God’s compassion that are not there.”

“I don’t want to watch you suffer, other than intellectually & they pay me to do that.”

“The church is not dying. The church is changing. And for the first time since the year 313, the church has a chance to ask what God wants it to be without being compromised by someone else’s political agenda. If we have vision and courage and openness and generosity, this could become one of the best moments in the church’s history. And we do not have to be big to do this. We just have to concentrate on mission rather than marketing.”

“I have made numerous mistakes in my life, but I have never gotten a cargo ship stuck sideways in the Suez Canal.”

“All I can figure out is that the rules committee got really drunk one night and decided to come up with the stupidest possible overtime system for college football without actually sacrificing a goat.”

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Honoring Professor David Johnson

Lover Extraordinaire: Holy Spirit in Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls Ellen L. Babinsky

A

strong Christian women’s movement emerged during the 12th and 13th centuries in Western Europe. This movement involved Cistercian and Dominican nuns, Franciscan women called Poor Clares, and beguines, to name a few. Beguines drew attention particularly because these women did not fit set categories. They formed their own communities in various places, many in northern France and Belgium. Some church leaders esteemed beguines as holy women and other leaders suspected they were heretics. In the northern French areas, beguines were dependent upon regional or local protection, both secular and religious.

One beguine, Marguerite Porete, remains mysterious. We do not know where Marguerite came from, nor do we know when she wrote her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls.1 She was most likely a solitary beguine, meaning she had no status as a member of a particular beguine house, and she thus received no official protection of any kind. She was probably an itinerant teacher/preacher in the region of Hainaut in northern France, and she very likely expounded her teachings to small groups of interested listeners. Her daring statements regarding union with God were condemned as heresy, yet her book was copied, translated, and preserved; however, the book was burned in her presence around 1306 by the Bishop of Cambrai. In 1308 Marguerite was arrested and left in prison for a year and half. The official condemnation of Marguerite was declared on May 31, 1310, and she was given over to the flames on June 1, 1310.

What Marguerite Porete states about the Holy Spirit only once, or perhaps a few times, may carry sufficient interpretive weight to affect how the text is understood. These gems may be found in a sentence, in a subordinate clause, or in the juxtaposition of words. Suffice it to say, the reader could read past these opportu-

Ellen Babinsky is Professor Emerita of Church History at Austin Seminary where she taught from 1988-2009; she also served as Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs. She translated Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls (Classics of Western Spirituality series, 1993).

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Babinsky nities without realizing that it might be more fruitful to read slowly and to pause from time to time. More importantly, it may take several readings before one can have a better idea of what is being said. The question of how the Holy Spirit is to be understood in the Mirror offers us a case in point. In The Mirror of Simple Souls we encounter portrayals of the Holy Spirit as Lover, as the fullness or totality of Trinity, and as Love itself. The Holy Spirit is named explicitly as the Lover of the Soul toward the end of her book: Love has made me find by nobility These verses of a song.

It is [of] the Deity pure, About whom Reason knows not how to speak, And of a Lover, Which I have without a mother, Who is the issue Of God the Father And of God the Son also.

His name is Holy Spirit, From whom I possess such joining in the heart, That He causes joy to remain in me …

Lover, you have grasped me in your love, To give me your great treasure, That is, the gift of your own self, Which is divine goodness.2 The Holy Spirit named as Lover comes almost at the end of the text as we have it; in fact, this chapter ends with the word “explicit” which ordinarily signifies the end of a manuscript. The chapters which follow may have been added later. Porete’s designation of “Lover” for the Holy Spirit is something of a surprise; in many medieval mystical writings the Lover of the soul is Christ. Christ as the Bridegroom of the soul has a long textual history; but we have here the clear designation of the Holy Spirit as the Lover of the soul.

Much earlier in the text Porete offers her basic understanding of the Trinity.

Love speaks: She [the Soul] knows, says Love, by the virtue of Faith, that God is all Power, and all Wisdom, and perfect Goodness, and that God the Father has accomplished the work of the Incarnation, and the Son also and the Holy Spirit also. Thus, God the Father has joined human nature to the person of God the Son, and the person of God the Son has joined [human nature] to the person of Himself, and God the Holy Spirit has joined [human nature] to the person of God the Son.3 Porete pushes this assertion to mean that because the soul possesses the Holy Spirit, the soul therefore possesses the fullness of the Trinity, as the Holy Spirit declares: 21

Honoring Professor David Johnson And since [the soul] possesses all that I have, and the Father and the Son have nothing which I do not have in myself … thus this Soul possesses in her … the treasure of the Trinity, hidden and enclosed within her.4 Holy Spirit, explicitly identified as Love, occurs later in the text: Love has carried [the Soul] from the place where she was, in leaving her senses in peace and so has seized their use. This is the completion of her pilgrimage … This is the captivity of the high sea, for she [the soul] lives without her will and so she is in being above her deliberation. Otherwise she would be reproached by the sovereign who places her there without herself, and so she would have war against Love, who is the Holy Spirit.5 Here the text identifies the Holy Spirit as Love. Further on we encounter this interesting, lengthy statement which seems to be an original formulation by Porete: [God] is one eternal substance, one pleasing fruition, one loving conjunction. The Father is eternal substance; the Son is pleasing fruition; the Holy Spirit is loving conjunction. This loving conjunction is from eternal substance and from pleasing fruition through divine love … Divine love of unity generates in the … Soul, eternal substance, pleasing fruition, loving conjunction. From the eternal substance the memory possesses the power of the Father. From the pleasing fruition the intellect possesses the wisdom of the Son. From the loving conjunction the will possesses the goodness of the Holy Spirit. This goodness of the Holy Spirit conjoins [the will] in the love of the Father and of the Son. This conjunction places the Soul in being without being which is Being. Such Being is the Holy Spirit Himself, who is Love from the Father and from the Son.6 In this passage, Holy Spirit, clearly named Love, functions as a rich wellspring for the beguine’s thought.

These citations show us that the Holy Spirit is the Lover of the Soul, the fullness of the Trinity, and divine Love. We can now see that the Holy Spirit functions in a major role in the Mirror. The first thing to note is that the words “the Holy Spirit” and “Love” are used interchangeably. This interchangeable use occurs early in the text in a subtle manner. Since Holy Spirit is Love, then, I believe it is appropriate to understand “Holy Spirit” each time the term “Love” is used in the text. It becomes clear that the Holy Spirit has written the book: I have said, says this Soul, that Love caused [the book] to be written through human knowledge and through willing it by the transformation of my intellect with which I was encumbered, as it appears in this book.

For Love made the book in unencumbering my spirit.7 Since Holy Spirit is Love, it then becomes clear that Holy Spirit is the primary speaker, teacher, and actor in this book. And so it is that the Holy Spirit powerfully transforms the reader, calling the reader to journey into the divine life.

The reader may be transformed by the Holy Spirit in the reading of the Mirror, 22

Babinsky but not before she experiences a certain amount of frustration in the enterprise.

Many willing students have wilted in the face of the daunting verbal tidal wave.

Those readers, on the other hand, who patiently read to the end of the text are more likely to find some footing in Porete’s deep waters—or rather, fertile wetlands and estuaries. Because we have only this one text, the task of understanding is made more difficult. We have nothing else with which to make a comparison. Multiple readings bring certain aspects to light which were not apparent before and which may contribute to the transformative possibility of the text.

A closing reflection seems appropriate. In reading Porete’s text, it occurred to me that the Mirror offers a deep trust that the Holy Spirit hears, no, knows our prayers before we find the words. The Apostle Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans that, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”8 I believe Marguerite Porete understood. v NOTES 1. Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls; translated and introduced by Ellen L. Babinsky, preface by Robert E. Lerner. Classics of Western Spirituality, (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1993).

2. Mirror, Chapter 122, p. 199.

3. Mirror, Chapter 14, p. 96.

4. Mirror, Chapter 42, p. 122.

5. Mirror, Chapter 110, p. 182 (emphasis mine).

6. Mirror, Chapter 115, p. 185 (emphasis mine).

7. Mirror, Chapter 119, p. 195.

8. Romans 8:26-27.

“Alright, church history students, go to bed now. You will do best on the exam if you are fresh and well-rested. (I am trying to help further your education, not kill you outright.)”

Coming in the Fall 2022 issue:

An issue honoring the retirement of Professor Paul Hooker on “Poetry as Theology” 23

Honoring Professor David Johnson

On Sanctuaries and Oceans with No Edges Allan Hugh Cole Jr.

Storytelling

W

hen it comes to teaching and preaching, David Johnson can appropriately be called a virtuoso. His virtuosity derives from having enviable talent, yes, but also from his perceptive eye, generous heart, and his appreciation for a good story.

Whether he’s drawing from his vast repository of historical knowledge or from his lived experience, and regardless of whether the occasion is teaching, preaching, or conversation over tea, David makes us feel a part of the stories he tells and as though the lessons they convey are meant just for us.

I learned from Hans Frei, David’s teacher at Yale, that Christians make sense of life by hearing and telling stories, by locating their personal stories within the more encompassing story of the gospel, such that it becomes the “container” for these other stories being crafted. I honor David on the occasion of his retirement and express my deep gratitude for what he has taught me by sharing stories about anxiety, community, and occasions for experiencing the divine.

Stories of Anxiety Personal stories pervaded by anxiety or related conditions such as depression abound. According to an analysis done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, four in ten U.S. adults reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, with adults in the 18-24 age group reporting the most symptoms at 56.2% and adults aged 25-49 reporting symptoms at 48.9%.

Anxiety has been a part of our collective stories for a long time. Jesus knew

Allan Cole is Deputy to the President for Societal Challenges and Oppor-

tunities at The University of Texas at Austin, where he also serves as the Bert Kruger Smith Centennial Professor in Social Work in The Steve Hicks School of Social Work. The author of Counseling Persons with Parkinson’s Disease (Oxford University Press) and In the Care of Plenty: Poems (Resource Publications), you can follow him on Twitter @PDWise.

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Cole this and insisted that living anxiously runs counter to what God wants for us. As a result, Jesus exhorts his followers: “Do not be anxious about your life,” and asks, “Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?” He urges: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.” And recognizing that fear often couples with anxiety, he adds: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Jesus did not want us to have stories pervaded by anxiety.

From where does our anxiety come? Paul Tillich believed anxiety follows from an awareness of our limitations, from a “self-awareness of the finite self as finite, of the possibility of nonexistence,” or “threat of non-being.” Human beings tend to transform what Tillich termed existential anxiety into fear. We find something identifiable and concrete to fear so we can rally resources like self-affirmation and courage to conquer that fear. Courage defends against despair by “taking anxiety into itself” says Tillich, so that when we are anxious, we must cultivate “the courage to be.” Tillich refers to God as the Ground of Being, as humans’ principal resource for ameliorating existential anxiety. It is authentic relationships with God and other people that foster courage.

Let me tell you how I know this is true.

The Courage to Be It’s a Sunday morning in August, nearly a year since I received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease at the age of forty-eight. Still living in the Parkinson’s closet, I push through most days feeling anxious and alone.

I sit silently in the sanctuary. My wife, Tracey, our daughters, Meredith and Holly, and I gravitated here a few months ago. This small community of people from nearly every continent offers open hearts and shares open minds. We are drawn to this church’s racial and ethnic diversity and its commitments to social, economic, and environmental justice. We are drawn to its conscience. These folks extend hospitality to the poor, homeless, pilgrim, and stranger.

I think about how I got here.

Since childhood, I mostly found comfort in my faith and in church, learning stories about Jesus treating people with compassion and healing them. I spent time with people aiming to follow Jesus’s example and to latch on to hope. Sanctuaries housed mystery and intrigue. They made me tingle and feel warm. I loved their smells and their people. There, I experienced what the psychologist Erik H. Erikson called a sense of at-home-ness in the world.

It was the beginning of my belief I could find what I needed in this space, where my personal stories intersected with others’ stories within the container of the gospel.

Mosaics The congregation gathered around me on this day comes with authenticity and vulnerability, with compassion and generosity. They are those who live anxiously, hurt, and hope. Collectively, they come to learn about and live out the values of Jesus of 25

Honoring Professor David Johnson Nazareth, he who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt. 5:9); “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise” (Luke 3:11); and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39).

Light shines through the mosaic of stained glass surrounding the triangular chancel. Mosaics are made of something that’s been broken, yet remains beautiful, even useful. This particular mosaic’s colors pop out as if hoping to land in worshipers’ laps. A woman in her late twenties plays “Morning Has Broken” beautifully on her violin.

My mind drifts to the past year: a faint tremor in my left index finger, an initial misdiagnosis, multiple exams, a brain scan, sleepless nights, anxiety, loneliness, and tears. Staring at the stained glass, I consider my mosaic of beliefs: about justice and mercy; fairness and equity; pain and comfort; meaning and purpose; despair and hope.

I also consider if I sense a presence of the divine, whether in churches or in my life.

Wondering what life might require someday, I look to my right, where Holly, Meredith, and Tracey sit, and I fight back tears as my daughters draw in their sketchbooks. A guitarist plays another musical piece while a trio sings.

Pilgrims Most people here today are members who attend weekly. Many are facing the tensions of living a burdened and faithful life.

There’s Caleb, a sweet, bright twelve-year-old boy with autism. He works valiantly each day to go to school, interact peaceably with others, and be a typical kid. Once, he invited Tracey over for dinner and the rest of us got to join her. His remarkable parents seated beside him, Sarah and Sam, advocate for Caleb, model pure vulnerability coupled with exquisite courage and grace, and never cease cheering him on.

There’s Ruth, an older woman with a gentle disposition and astute mind who is confined to a wheelchair, and for whom living alone gets more challenging. She sits next to Nancy, who faithfully and tenderly cares for her friend, and whose political positions impress me.

Julio and Astrid are there as well. They will marry in a little over a year, and I think of Julio’s longtime separation from his family who cannot get back into the U.S. from their native Mexico, in spite of having lived here for many years.

Then, I see Leslie, who lives courageously, with dignity, and at enviable peace with breast cancer that has metastasized. Her contagious, resolute smile simultaneously heartens and convicts me. Months later, she’ll be in hospice care.

I also see Jose, a kind and brawny man in his late thirties, surrounded by his lovely parents as well as by his siblings, nieces, and nephews. All of them, along with the larger church community, have prayed for Jose while he sought sobriety and spent nearly a decade in prison. He’s recently been released and hopes to get his life back on track.

I then flashback to Kate, a middle-aged woman who lives on the streets. She 26

Cole wandered into the church a couple of weeks earlier and we met in front of the coffee urn. Her clean coffee cup stood in stark contrast to her dirty fingernails and the dinge of homelessness. She heard voices and seemed scared and suspicious. Like many of us, she was there looking for connection, significance, and hope.

A Leap of Faith Thinking about anxiety conjures up an image New York Times columnist David Brooks has used, namely, one of an ocean with no edge. Brooks writes, We are all fragile when we don’t know what our purpose is, when we haven’t thrown ourselves with abandon into a social role, when we haven’t committed ourselves to certain people, when we feel like a swimmer in an ocean with no edge … People are really tough only after they have taken a leap of faith for some truth or mission or love. Once they’ve done that they can withstand a lot.

Life is not easy. We get sick, lose those we love, struggle for meaning, seek peace, and clamor for justice. These days, we also worry about pandemics and crushing needs on a global scale. Individually and collectively, we experience both adversity and anxiety.

Surrounded by all of this, we desire a place in communities that value us, reassure us, companion us, and urge us on, perhaps as we also long for clues of a divine presence in our lives. Jesus taught it has always been so.

I’ve spent much of my life looking for answers to big life questions. For decades I searched mostly in books, whether when reading them or writing them, and by sorting through the ideas and insights of the sages. I still do all of this. Now, however, I’m more apt to look for answers, or at least possibilities, in people and relationships, in shared stories of struggle as well as joy, in stories of those who stand in solidarity against any form of injustice and dedicate themselves to creating new mosaics that add beauty and purpose to our lives. I hone in on human mosaicsin-process, broken and beautiful people, and on where I see efforts within a community to love, to be loved, and, as the Bible says, “to share one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2).

Here is where I find an edge in an ocean of anxiety, where I drop an anchor, where every so often I glimpse the divine. Here is where my story makes sense. v NOTES 1. Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of the 2019 National Health Interview Survey. https://www. kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/ 2. See Matt. 6:19-21, 25-34; Luke 12:22-34, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version.

3. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 192.

4. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 2-4, 66.

5. I was diagnosed in the fall of 2016.

6. David Brooks, “Making Modern Toughness,” New York Times, August 30, 2016.

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Honoring Professor David Johnson

Love Letters from an Underground Fan Club

W

ords matter, of course they do. Words are the scaffolding upon which we shape our worldly experiences and our worldly perspective towards the Divine. Professor Johnson taught that exquisitely. He also taught that intellectual understanding will never be enough to sustain. We must be willing to wander in the mystery of God, to acknowledge our vulnerability, and to grow in trusting the Truth of God. In the face of ever-shortening attention spans, we are to be concise, clear, and ever pointing towards God’s love. It is this last challenge which is the cornerstone of Professor Johnson’s mission with seminary students. We are to be first about our spirituality. It is truly the sacred trust of pastoral leadership roles in whatever shape they manifest. Without attending to our spirituality, our word scaffolding will never be more than dry bones.

Well, a few years into the ministry thing, it seemed nigh on impossible to make time for my own spiritual exploration even as Professor Johnson’s encouragement lingered in my mind. Eventually, a couple of friends joined me in a pastor cohort via the Education Beyond the Walls grant. We focused on spirituality practices including labyrinth walks. One labyrinth walk concurred with a moment of profound personal crisis in my life. I approached the path to God with the name of the one for whom I held my breath, in fear, without words to speak, ask, or even pray. I simply held the name as I wandered closer to God. Somewhere in that journey, God gave me peace which passes all understanding. I could trust the Truth of God’s goodness.

I could trust God was with the one I loved so deeply—in life and in death. God is.

God is love.

Dead bones to life. My soul filled. This gift given has sustained even through the collective trauma of the pandemic. My transformed heart has been given words to create spaces within the sacred scaffolding for others hurting, wandering and weary. My spiritual care is a priority and a blessing. Thank you, Professor Johnson.

By calling your students to claim God’s love within, you have empowered us to proclaim God’s love far and wide.

– Suzette Thorpe Johnson (MDiv’15) •••

T

oday I was offered an assignment that is basically impossible, and I am supposed to accomplish it in less than five hundred words—write an article about 28

Reminiscences the Reverend Dr. David W. Johnson and his influence at Austin Seminary. The good news is that there are several people writing, so hopefully whatever I cannot articulate will be managed by others. I see no way to do even the beginnings of an adequate job.

I have known David for slightly more than twenty years. We met when he was teaching systematic theology in Houston in the seminary’s extension program. He introduced me to the Fathers of the Early Church but also to feminist and womanist theologians; I owe to David my love for Elizabeth Johnson but also for parts of Origen’s writing.

When I was a student at Austin Seminary, the faculty frequently encouraged us to “go deeper, think deeper,” but it was Professor Johnson who taught many of us some things about how to go deeper. David was not just an expert on church history, he modeled and taught spirituality. One would be in a class on spirituality with David leading a lesson on Lectio Divina, and one moment David would be modeling how to read scripture in the presence of God. The next moment Blam! one was breath-takingly aware of the presence of God. David really likes Augustine, and I have forgiven him for that, and he has (I think) forgiven me for not being able to let go of the fact that Augustine was a product of his time and, therefore, had little understanding of or interest in women as Christians. I hope he has also forgiven me for having the hubris to imagine I get to judge Augustine.

And (expletive deleted) the Rev. Dr. David Johnson can preach! He sits on his stool by the table on the chancel and tells the most remarkable and engaging stories and somehow leads one deeper into the Christian life—there’s that deeper thing again. David can be talking about a statue of the Buddhist goddess Quan Yin or telling the story of using McAshes on Ash Wednesday, and one falls more in love with Jesus and desperately wants to be better at loving and at tending sheep.

I have a thousand David stories from in class or on campus or in the cafeteria or in his office, from dinner with him and his wife, Jane. He is a man who can listen and listen deeply. He is deeply generous, funny, wise, smart, able to see beyond the surface but, nevertheless, appreciates the beauty of the surface. He lives his life, bounded in many ways by those metal crutches and that scooter, bounded by his pain, and somehow those boundaries have freed his spirit to know more deeply.

Beware of his sharp wit, Friends, but enjoy his laughter. This is a love letter from not only me but from all his students. We love you, David, but that’s not new news.

– Judye Pistole (MDiv’03, DMin’12) •••

T

o be honest, I was not sure how to interact with Professor Johnson in the beginning. Back in 2011, I had been placed on alert about racism and homophobia at the seminary. I wondered, Was he one of the professors reputed to give students 29

Honoring Professor David Johnson like me a difficult time?

My first class with him in January 2012 involved touring worship spaces around Austin. As one of two big boys in class, I was volun-told to ride with him and help with his wheelchair. On these trips, we bonded and joked around. I would happily feed him lines so he could tell a Dad joke or two. I admit to pushing the limits a bit when I critiqued Shelton Chapel and sucked the air out of the room. Johnson defended me stating I was entitled to my opinion. In history class, he didn’t hold back in discussions of the Catholic Church (my background).

This foundation helped years later when in another class we were assigned to read an excerpt of Desert Fathers. I read racist undertones in a section. Immediately, I emailed him about my concerns and felt comfortable in doing so. He offered that he hadn’t read it as I did but could empathize. With my consent, we talked openly about it in class and came to an understanding. Throughout my time at Austin Seminary, I gained a reputation as a hugger, which we did. I am blessed to have had Dr. Johnson as a teacher and a friend.

– Anthony Spears (MDiv’15) •••

W

e at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Galveston, were very fortunate to have Dr. Johnson as our pastor prior to his joining the faculty at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. David was loved by the members of our church for many reasons, but I will first touch on his ministry. He was able to articulate complex theological precepts such as grace, justification and sanctification, theodicy, and many others in understandable terms by use of everyday analogies that all could understand. He did so with humor, patience, and generosity. One of David’s gifts was his ability to understand where someone was in their faith journey, and to address the next challenge.

It will come as no surprise to know that the second outstanding aspect of David’s time at Westminster was culinary in nature! An invitation to dinner with David and Jane was anticipated with delight not only for the charming company but also because the Johnson kitchen produced outstanding cuisine! You came from these encounters satiated by both the food and the conversation!

When the Johnsons arrived in Galveston the membership of Westminster volunteered to unload the truck. We were ill-prepared. We learned the true meaning of a personal library, which was transported box by box to the second floor of his historic home. I think it took me three days to recover.

Westminster has traditionally celebrated the Christmas and Easter Seasons in style, including special services for Ash Wednesday. The Johnsons became enamored of the many palm trees which grace our island, to the extent that home-grown palm ashes seemed like a good thing. David decided to gather some palm fronds from his neighborhood. In Texas, it is not always prudent to remove anything from someone’s property, but apparently this “man of the cloth” felt protected by a kind 30

Reminiscences of qualified divine immunity. He brought the freshly harvested palm branches to the church for burning and discovered that green palms produce a lot of smoke but not much ash. It fell to Jane to attempt the production of additional ashes from a recent newspaper even as the hour for worship approached. Fortunately, no persons or animals were harmed by this experiment, and sufficient material for the service was the eventual outcome.

We lamented when David left for Austin but also understood this transition was an opportunity to serve our Lord and future students. We were so blessed to have him with us for those very special, but too short, years. We wish Dr. Johnson blessings and Godspeed with our love and gratitude!

– Robert and Patricia Beach •••

L

ess than one year into my seminary experience, I learned that Dr. Johnson had an underground fan club, and it only took one class beyond the hard facts of Church History for me to understand why. Dr. Johnson has a unique style of teaching which blends vast historical knowledge with practical application, held together by pastoral concern and humor. Many fan club members kept notebooks solely dedicated to capturing his one-line pearls of wisdom or witty remarks. His classes took you on a journey simultaneously through history and self-discovery. Just take a look at what other fan club members from the most recent graduating class had to say: “I don’t know if I’ve ever met another person who knows as much as Dr. Johnson does. I do know, however, that I’ve never met another person who handles so much knowledge as graciously, as witfully, or as wonderfully as Dr. Johnson does.” – Jonathan Freeman “Dr. Johnson’s quiet and quick wisecracking was a true highlight of my seminary experience. He’s a wonderful professor and academic advisor who took seminary education seriously but reminded me not to take myself too seriously in the process.” – Caitlin Parsons “Dr. Johnson’s wit and humor are only matched by his pastoral care, and they often combine; both taught me much more than I had ever hoped.”

– Joe Lundy “Dr. Johnson has a beautiful way of weaving humor, wisdom, and a pastoral presence all into one class. He is the type of professor where you sit on the edge of your seat waiting for what he will say next.” – Jacob Naron “His quiet ability to bring an entire classroom of people into an introspective, empathetic, and thoughtful mindset is one of the most impressive things about him. I am forever grateful that my time at seminary overlapped with Dr. Johnson.” – Reba Balint 31

Honoring Professor David Johnson I echo all that my fellow fan club members have to say, and add that as a professor and mentor, Dr. Johnson helped me to understand myself in ways that continue to have a significant positive impact on me. Through his nonjudgmental guidance and wisdom, I discovered so much about my faith, fears, goals, and strengths.

In his non-imposing way, Dr. Johnson walked with me down the difficult path of discernment, encouraging me during times of rejection and celebrating with me in success, always prodding me to follow what I felt was my soul’s work. As I now round out my first semester in a doctoral program, Dr. Johnson’s voice still speaks to me, reminding me of the importance of taking time to get out of my head and

“We must cling to two beliefs: that God works through the church and that God works outside the church. Each of these is more a matter of faith than observation. But to lose either one (or both) is to succumb to ecclesiastical idolatry or sheer despair.”

“It is moderately embarrassing when you inadvertently grade the key to your final exam and discover that you didn’t do very well.”

Even if you love football, and even if you’ve been a Dallas Cowboys fan for quite a while, there are some times—tonight comes to mind—when you turn off the game and start looking for a PBS pledge break.

“What is the study of church history good for? Among other things, it can provide antidotes. In the [current] era—marked by the conviction that prosperity is sanctifying—I suggest a double dose of St. Theophan the Recluse. In an emergency, St. Francis of Assisi is available over the counter, or at your local home and garden center, often at a steep discount.”

“The first step in being a responsible theologian (and I include all pastors in this category) is to realize that you’re in over your head. The second step is to find out what’s under your feet.

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Strictly speaking, the God Particle is not the Higgs Boson; it is the consecrated host. One more bit of evidence (if any were needed) that theoretical physicists and theologians think very differently.

“For me, barbecue is a religion. I speak in tongs.”

Reminiscences into my heart.

I was speaking with a fellow fan club member about Dr. Johnson’s impending retirement, and he pulled out his notebook of “DJ pearls of wisdom” to read the final entry. It is fitting that this article ends with Dr. Johnson’s own words, as often, no one could say it better than he: “I will be a hard act to follow.”

- David Johnson – Kelly Bratkowski (MDiv’21)

“What is the opposite of faith? I don’t think it’s denial and certainly not doubt. It might well be despair, as Kierkegaard suggests. But I am beginning to think that the opposite of faith is self-involvement.”

“The Reformation is OVER. Perhaps we need this current unpleasantness in order to see just how over it is. The time when we could reform the church by leaving it, and maintaining ourselves as little islands of purity is over. That way leads to the death of the church, and a petty, ignominious death it would be. We must come together, stay together, speak together, disagree together, quarrel and reconcile together, and let love do its slow, patient, and pervasive work.”

“Laramie Junior High did not prepare me for Pullman High School.

Pullman High School did not prepare me for Yale. Yale did not prepare me for adult life. Adult life has not prepared me for death. My epitaph is going to be, ‘You’re kidding.’”

“The fact that Jesus loves you does not at all exclude the possibility that he occasionally finds you irritating.”

“I have decided to dedicate the rest of my (sentient) days to two quests: the meaning of life and the recipe for the perfect cheese dip. I do not expect to find either one. It will be enough if I manage not to confuse the two.”

“There is no verse in Scripture that states or implies that gluing a fish symbol onto the trunk of your car gives you the right to be a [jerk]!”

“We have been asked to put our course goals in all of our syllabi. Fair enough. My goal is the same in every course I teach: to accompany my students to the foot of the cross and leave them there. It’s that simple.”

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Honoring Professor David Johnson

My Pastoral, Rascally Friend Cynthia L. Rigby

T

here is so much to celebrate about David W. Johnson. He has wit and wisdom. He is a great photographer, a lover of animals, a mentor to all. He is my next-door neighbor and friend, so we know things about each other such as how late we get our trash out on Wednesday mornings and what we order from Grubhub (they tend to confuse our deliveries). David watches with us for the breaking forth of the bluebonnets our kids and their friends planted at the border of our front lawns when they were little (one time there was even a rare albino!), and we know how precious his accessible kitchen is to him, because we watched his late spouse, the Reverend Jane Johnson, build it for him, nail by nail and board by board. We have fingerprints of David in our home: a bottle of port sits on each of our children’s dressers—a gift given to them by David when they were born, along

Cynthia Rigby is The W.C. Brown Professor of Theology at Austin Seminary. Dr. Rigby’s latest book is Holding Faith: A Practical Introduction to Christian Faith (Abingdon Press, 2018). She is a general editor of the nine-volume lectionary commentary series, Connections (Westminster John Knox) and is currently completing a book on Christian feminist theology and a book tentatively titled Splashing in Grace: A Theology of Play.

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Rigby with instructions not to open until age twenty-one. His spare house key lies in the drawer of our rolltop desk; his cat, Ollie comes in and out our back door, looking for treats and for our cat and his buddy, Neville.

We even know each other’s sleeping and working rhythms. For about a decade I had a habit of getting up super early and David would stay up super late. Sometimes, if I woke up super super early, I would see his light on in his study and realize he hadn’t gone to bed yet. Sometimes we would email in that weird timeless postnight, pre-dawn space. One of these times—I’ll never forget it—David asked me to read the sermon he had just completed. It was the homily for Stan Hall’s funeral (Stan was a professor of liturgy and homiletics at Austin Seminary from 1990 to 2008 and died of a rare disease at age fifty-eight). In it, he told the story about how Stan got fired from his first job—which was making pancakes in a pancake house.

“He used a ladle full of batter,” David explained, relaying Stan’s story, “and produced a plate-sized pancake. One day, his boss told him that they needed to make more money, but they didn’t want to raise their prices. So, said the boss, don’t use a full ladle, use a little less—two-thirds, maybe. Stan didn’t protest. He didn’t quit. He didn’t stand outside the restaurant with a sign. He just didn’t do it. He kept on using a full ladle for each pancake. He was fired.”

David’s sermon was, characteristically moving and comforting. But just at the end I was zinged with the words, “Peace, brother. We’ll be along.” Leave it to David to take a sharp turn off Comfort and onto Mortality at the last second, with no possibility of rebuttal. The Word I heard for Stan was: “You made it.” But the Word for me was: “You still have to do this, you know.” I suddenly found myself asking whether I would sacrifice a job for my conviction that everyone needs a full pancake.

I like to think David is the professor most often invited by the students to preach at Baccalaureate because we have taught them well that being “pastoral” isn’t only about being nice, but about helping people see the truth and staying with them when they are undone by it. David does this with wit and wisdom, but also with love, reminding us of the gospel (there’s a reason his book is called Trust in God). He somehow also manages to do it in a very down to earth way, not floating above us as some kind of Spiritual Giant, but speaking as one who is cognizant that he, and we—along with all the Saints—are (as Barth puts it) “wicked rascals.” We all live in the dialectical tension of the simul—we are “at the same time” righteous and sinful—and this affects how we act, including how we interpret the events of our lives. I may be taking more liberty with the phrase than Barth intended, but it seems to me that acting as a “wicked rascal” is to be endearing as well as guilty, culpable as well as cute. It’s the place most of us spend a lot of time, trying to be helpful and good, but still watching the clock, counting our chips, twisting the truth ever so slightly, defending our good intentions, or engaging in acts of piety that we can’t help but hope will impress others. To be a “wicked rascal” looks not like 101 Dalmations’ Cruella de Vil or Superman’s Lex Luther, but more like Curious George or Lucy from “I Love Lucy.” When Curious George spills grape juice on the carpet and floods the apartment trying to clean it up, it’s kind of cute. But in the 35

Honoring Professor David Johnson real world, being unchallenged in relation to our rascaliness eventually leads us, it seems to me, to having a deluded sense of self that interferes with our relationship to God and to one another. David has the rare gift of cutting through all the rascaliness, even when it is being missed by everyone else, by somehow taking account of his own.

Let me share with you a story that up until now only David and I knew. David is the only one I have ever called on to cast demons out of me. Long story short; it was one of those long, extra COVID-y nights and my left shoulder (which I since have figured out and had replaced) was terribly painful. I was home alone; my husband and our daughter were at her soccer tournament, and our son was out making music with his band. My shoulder and arm had reached a new level of pain and started to shake uncontrollably. I started to think about the story in Mark 9 of the boy who can’t control his movements because he’s possessed by an evil demon. I thought to myself—it’s worth a shot—maybe it would help to have someone lay hands on me.

And what luck! I have David Johnson living next door! So, I texted him my unusual request to lay hands on me for healing. “Well, we could do it outside in the driveway between our houses, tomorrow,” he said, “but I haven’t been vaccinated, yet.” Well, we were in Stage 5 in Austin, and I didn’t want him to risk it, so I asked him to pray for me instead. “I am praying for you as someone I love,” he answered. My shaking slowed. And then he asked the feet on the ground question: “Do we need to get you to the ER?” Do you see what David did there? He took account of his own rascaliness. I mean, it must have been a little tempting to run right out to the driveway, jar of oil in hand, risking COVID for the sake of anointing a neighbor/colleague. But David instead slowed me down, pointed out the danger to him, and asked me the question that shook me out of my bravado and gave me the strength again to trust in God. No, I did not need to go to the ER. Yes, I’ll call you again if it gets worse. Thank you for praying. Sure, we can talk later about the laying on of hands.

Barth noted that saints are “wicked rascals” just as much, and perhaps more, than anyone else. The difference between people who identify as Christians and those who do not is not that Christians sin less because they have acquired spiritual superpowers by way of pious acts. The difference is that Christians know their hope lies not in their actions, and so they neither have to override their sufferings nor deny themselves pleasure. Instead, they may authentically cry out to God and enjoy God’s good gifts of this world, “using them for God’s purposes” (Calvin). Thank you, David, for reminding me that I am a wicked rascal. Thank you for reminding me to trust in God. And thank you for being the most un-spiritual spiritual person I know. v

Insights: The Podcast Listen to Editor Bill Greenway’s interview with Professor David Johnson here:

www.austinseminary.edu/insightspodcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

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AUSTIN PRESBYTERIAN

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Theodore J. Wardlaw, President Board of Trustees Keatan A. King, Chair James C. Allison Lee Ardell Janice L. Bryant (MDiv’01,DMin’11) Kelley Cooper Cameron Katherine B. Cummings (MDiv’05) Thomas Christian Currie James A. DeMent (MDiv’17) Jill Duffield (DMin’13) Britta Martin Dukes (MDiv’05) Peg Falls-Corbitt Jackson Farrow Jr. Beth Blanton Flowers, M.D. Stephen Giles Jesús Juan González (MDiv’92) William Greenway Cyril Hollingsworth Ora Houston

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Spring 2022

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